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Weekend Recap: July 23-24, 2016

Eldritch Moon Standard is finally upon us! The StarCityGames.com Open in Columbus concluded, with Devin Koepke on Bant Company defeating Ali Aintrazi playing Sultai Control in the Finals. Elsewhere in the top 8, Kyle Boggemes and Dan Jessup were on the same wavelength with Koepke, both also piloting Bant Company. The rest of the top 8 consisted of 4 other decks, G/W Tokens, G/R Goggles, B/G Seasons Past, and B/W Angels. 5 different archetypes in top 8 leads us to believe that Standard is a pretty healthy and diverse format with the inclusion of Eldritch Moon. However, that may not actually be the case. The rest of the top 64 was littered, and I mean littered, with the following decks: Bant Company, U/W Spirits, and W/r Humans. Scrolling through the decklists shows us that while the top 8 was pretty diverse, the format may not be.

Now, let’s establish a preliminary tier list.

Tier 1
Bant Company
U/W Spirits
W/r Humans
G/W Tokens

Tier 2
Sultai Control
G/R Goggles
B/G Seasons Past
B/W Angels

Some may consider it foolish to have tier 2 be only decks that made top 8 of this tournament and didn’t put a copy anywhere else in the top 64. To those people, I say that the tiers of a metagame are not based on which decks are good, great, or even incredible. Instead, it’s based off of what people are playing and what they will be playing in the future. Players tend to take tournament results from one tournament, especially if it is the first tournament in a given Standard format, too seriously. This means that even if, for example, Sultai Control is not a good deck, there will be many people next weekend at the Starcitygames.com Open in Baltimore playing it, regardless of the viability or power level of the deck. Such is the ways of tournament Magic.

Looking forward, I would tell people to expect a significant amount of Bant Company, U/W Spirits, and W/r Humans at the top tables of the Open this coming weekend in Baltimore. It’s only the first weekend of the Standard format, but I would argue that we already have an established metagame that will dictate tournament play for months, including the upcoming Pro Tour.